Most businesses today have local area networks (LANs) running in the building within which the business is located. These LANs may be used to send and/or receive information internally. Typically, Ethernet LANs use Gigabit Ethernet connectivity running at, for example, 1000 Megabits/second (Mbps) and store target content on servers connected to the Ethernet links with speeds of 100 Mbps or greater. However, information sent to a location outside the building or campus via public network facilities or information requested from servers outside the building using public network facilities may only be sent at speeds of about 1.5 Mbps or less. This may be due, in part, to the bandwidth limitations of conventional transports like, for example, T1, digital subscriber links (DSLs), cable and the like. Thus, information transmitted to or received from servers outside of an Ethernet LAN may experience a 1/1000th decrease in available bandwidth.
Accordingly, service providers are trying to bridge the gap of service and performance between backbone networks and the Ethernet LANs of their business customers. With greater than ninety percent of all businesses being connected to the public infrastructure via copper and/or standard phone lines, increasing the service and bandwidth potential to these customers may be problematic. Carriers are constrained with the technologies they currently have at their disposal due to the relatively low levels of bandwidth that can be delivered over a single copper connection. These platforms, primarily legacy asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) based platforms, were not designed to scale and meet the current bandwidth requirements.
Furthermore, existing technologies used to communicate between remote locations, for example, time division multiplexing (TDM) and ATM, are typically optimized for voice traffic. For example, ATM packets running across DSL is optimized for voice and/or time division multiplexed (TDM) traffic. Services, such as cable and DSL, are typically used for small businesses and may not be capable of providing highly reliable service for high capacity, high margin data. Typically, large businesses demand a business class communications service, for example, T1. However, even T1 is limited, as discussed above, by the existing infrastructure. Accordingly, a carrier grade solution for reliable delivery of high capacity, high margin data services to and/or between customers may be desired.